The Facial Hair Formula

Like the finely tuned mustaches of the 80s that nowadays makes you look like a creep, or the Mutton Chops look that really brings out how ugly your chin might be, all facial hair is a product of ever-changing societal conditions and advancements in blade technology. Well, not just a product, but a combination of all arithmetic operators – and as with any formula, there are a number of variables.

Skin Color (∇): Either written as a function of timezone starting with a value of 0 for the Orient and maxing out at 1 as we move East, or a function of penis size (also starting with a 0 for the Orient). Darker skin, closer in color to the color of normal hair (blondes don’t count), proves to be a better match as a slight feature enhancer. (It holds even in old age – white people can pull off grey or white hair, whereas the darker folk struggle) Try drawing on an egg with a Sharpie if you don’t agree.

Face Age (t): A subtly different variable than true age, face age has definitive correlation to pore size and line gradient strength. This is more of a sigmoid curve that increases drastically nearer to middle-facial-age, and rather slowly towards the edges of face life. A younger Stephen Curry and a present-day Michael Cera – who still looks bad even though his only purpose in life is to make people feel awkward – are examples of why this needs to be a variable. Tobey Maguire, for all his faults, knew this particular rule quite well.

The Sparse Matrix (ϕ): Sometimes, you just can’t grow a hair in certain spots. In that case, you have to work around that particular spot, instead of stubbornly trying to pretend it doesn’t exist and making me want to have a go at you with a rusty straight razor. You can’t even pull it off if you’re Jon Hamm. It’s actually what contributed to T.I.’s beef with the law. It might even drive you to the brink of starring in a Twilight movie. This is a negative counting variable – the more sparse spots you have, the more you might want to think about investing in some shaving cream.

Jawline Strength (σ): If your jawline has reached Ron Jeremy erection levels, there’s no point to muddle it all up with stray hairs. You don’t see Aaron Eckhart messing with it, even before he got half his face blown off in The Dark Knight. If it’s more along a Ben-Carson-knife level of sharpness, then you can go with the widely-despised-but-effective chinstrap look. Not only does it help your face look sharper if you’re trying to impress an Asian man squinting from afar through binoculars, but it also prevents you from having to shave right along the jaw.

Target Demographic: If you’re going after Asian women, the chinstrap is probably too much (heck, even the soul patch might be pushing it), and you’ll have to go with stubble. With white girls, stubble is a good choice as well. Actually, stubble’s viable for pretty much everyone, provided you don’t have an ugly face that needs to be covered up by a beard and you can actually grow hair everywhere on your face. Let’s rename this ‘Stubble Trouble’, and classify it as the Gimel operator ℷ that’s integrate it over the desired length of facial hair.

The Formula: Facial hair viability is given by F=ℷ{(5∇)!*(1/(1+e^(-t)))*1.5^(max(ϕ,σ))}

Test Case I: Bradley Cooper is American with some Irish and Italian in him (∇≈0.65), with a standard adult face (t=0), no sparse locations (ϕ=0) and high Jawline strength (σ=10). Operating over all facial hair lengths, this yields very high viability, which is evident in this, this, and this. He doesn’t have to shave his manhood off with sharpened steel every morning, but he can.

Test Case II: Matt Bomer is fully American (∇≈0.5), with a slightly boyish face (t=-0.2), a few sparse locations (ϕ=3) and middling Jawline strength (σ=6). This gives an overall preference to shorter facial hair, which makes sense because it brings out that gorgeous smile of his. Oh, man.